Former modeling mogul and Netflix star Julia Haart’s legal battles are mounting—and this time, she’s facing off against her own lawyer.
Houston-based law firm Ajamie LLP sued Haart on Monday, alleging the former Elite Models CEO owes them more than $1 million in legal fees from her sprawling court fight against her ex-husband.
According to the federal civil complaint, Haart hired Ajamie in February 2022 to assist on two of the ongoing lawsuits between her and Silvio Scaglia. She hired the firm that March to represent her before U.S. Customs and Border Protection regarding duties she allegedly owed on imported goods, the complaint says
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The firm claims it rendered all services requested and sent regular invoices, which Haart paid in part. But the firm alleges she still owes about $1.7 million and has “refused to pay the balance” despite having “previously acknowledged her obligation and promising to pay.”
Haart has been wrapped up in legal drama since she filed for divorce from her ex-husband in 2022. Scaglia, the owner of Elite World Group and its parent company, Freedom Holding, quickly appointed her CEO of the esteemed modeling agency after they married in 2019. By 2022, however, Haart had filed for divorce, claiming her husband had threatened to kill her. (He denied the allegations.) Scaglia ousted her from EWG that same day.
The messy split spawned multiple lawsuits, including one in which Scaglia accused Haart of taking $850,000 from a Freedom Holding bank account as retribution for her firing. The docket for that case shows Ajamie represented Haart in that case from April until June 2022, when they were replaced by another law firm. That case was dropped early last year.
Ajamie also represented Haart in a lawsuit against her ex-husband in Delaware, in which she claimed Scaglia could not unilaterally lock her out of the company because they were equal owners. The Delaware court found against her in that case, ruling that Scaglia was the controlling shareholder and confirming Haart’s ouster from Elite World Group.
At least one attorney unrelated to Ajamie, Adria Hillman, has sued Haart for unpaid legal bills—more than $400,000 for work on her divorce case. A New York Supreme Court judge entered a default judgment against Haart for that in November of last year.
The former modeling maven now runs an inclusive-sizing shapewear brand called +Body by Julia Haart and has a Netflix show, My Unorthodox Life, about her upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community. According to Page Six, she is scheduled to star in a new reality show on a “major network” that will be a “reality version” of the Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker rom-com Failure to Launch.
